Computers can be useful tools for communicating with and/or teaching individuals with disabilities, if the individuals have a way of interacting with the computer. Special computer keyboards using specially designed keycaps have been designed for individuals with motor difficulties from such disabilities as cerebral palsy, cognitive impairments, and brain trauma and blind individuals.
One such type of keyboard used is a touch sensitive keyboard having removable keycaps. These touch sensitive keyboards use overlays with various letters, numbers, or symbols to allow disabled individuals to learn and/or play games with the computer. For example, the computer may ask the student questions requiring the student to properly answer the question by activating a touch sensitive region on the keyboard.
However, even these specially designed touch sensitive keyboards have limitations because they are not able to interact with many of the features of existing software programs. Many software programs that are designed to teach students to read often ask students to locate sentences or multiple words or characters. For example, a software program may instruct a student to find the sentence, “The dog jumped over the fence.”
Unfortunately, the keycaps currently used with the known touch sensitive keyboards are limited because they can only display a single character or symbol on a specific position or switch on a keyboard at a time. Accordingly, each character or symbol of a word must utilize a separate position or switch on the keyboard. As a result, students cannot simply press/slide a single keycap on the keyboard and have the computer tell the user what the sentence says or verify that the student has chosen/located the proper words or phrase. In addition, each keycap has fixed information that cannot be changed or modified to suit the needs of the student, trainer or software program.
Accordingly, what is needed is a device that allows existing touch sensitive keyboards to interact with existing software programs. The device should allow the keyboard to be configured in a way which would allow a student to press/slide a single button and allow the software program to recognize the entire phrase or sentence. There is also a need for a device that allows an instructor to easily and inexpensively alter the button to display a wide variety of symbols, characters, phrases, or sentences.